food lover Archives - Curiously Carmen

G-men @ Nan Chu

August 23, 2016

Lately, I’ve been trying to diversify my food adventures and going to Richmond more often. Apart from the worst drivers in the Lower Mainland, Richmond is famous for delicious Asian food! One of the highest rated restaurants on Zomato in Richmond is G-Men, and I’ve heard great things about this place from friends.

Unfortunately, I tried to come here twice already before the third successful attempt. The first time was due to a last minute event I had to go to, and the second time was that there was no parking! Seriously, trying to find parking in that area is so difficult on a Friday night. Finally, the third time we decided to go later and were able to find parking!

Takoyaki, $3.75: Since it was our first time here and wanted to try more of the menu, the four of us decided to split a couple of appetizers. We ordered the four piece takoyaki and this was simply delicious! It was drenched in delicious sauce and the takoyaki were a pretty decent size.
Potato fries ($4.50): These fries were amazing! They were incredibly crispy and seasoned with such a delicious combination of herbs. We ended up ordering another plate because we all couldn’t stop eating this. In retrospect, that was a bad idea because we didn’t end up finishing the second order of fries and ended up packing it home. But seriously, this is a must try here!
Shio ramen ($8.95): Shio broth is made with chicken broth, and is my go to flavour for ramen! Macaroni and I both ordered the shio ramen. The shio ramen definitely did NOT disappoint. This was amazing. The broth was so well rounded – incredibly flavourful and thick. Meanwhile, the meat was melt in your mouth soft.
Tan tan men ($10.25): The boyfriend ordered this because he loves spicy peanut sauce. Again, the broth here was rich and thick, and full of spicy peanut flavour. Although I don’t love spicy peanut sauce as much as he does, I found this to be delicious as well!
Shoyu ramen ($8.95): Cheese ordered the shoyu ramen. Again, this was just as delicious as the rest of our meal. Rich, flavourful, and a very generous quality. No complaints.

G-Men was amazing and I definitely will be back. This place lands the spot of one of my top favourite ramen places in Vancouver now. All the food we had that night was delicious and full of quality. I’m already excited for my next visit here!

Yay!

Tasty Hand-Pulled Lanzhou Noodle, New York City

June 19, 2016

Since I’ve gotten back from New York, people have asked what my favourite moments there was. Undeniably, the Empire State Building, Matilda the musical, and visiting all the urban parks were at the top of the list!

But what about food? Would you believe me if I told you it was this small, dingy, hole-in-the-wall restaurant in Chinatown called Tasty Handpulled Noodle? Perhaps it’s the noodle crazed fanatic in me talking, but I still constantly think about this place and how delicious their hand-pulled noodles were.

House special noodle soup, $8.50: For $8.50, this bowl was definitely worth the price and so filling.
Beef noodle soup, $7.25: I ordered the beef noodle soup because I don’t really like tendon.

The star of the show here is definitely the hand made and hand pulled noodles. Each noodle bowl is made fresh to order. Your noodles start from a lump of dough, and once you specify the type of noodle you want, you can see the worker in the kitchen pulling and cutting the noodles before throwing it in the boiling hot water.

The noodles had a great chewy texture, and were pretty thick too. The slightly ribbed edges of the noodles allowed for the beef broth to soak inside, which led to a very delicious taste in your mouth!
Roast duck noodle soup, $7.75: We both loved this place so much and couldn’t stop thinking about it after lunch, so we came back for dinner the same day. Yup, we loved the noodles that much and the price made it even better!

Instead of ordering the beef noodle soup again, we decided on trying the roast duck noodle soup. The base and noodles were the same, the only difference is that it came with duck instead of beef. I actually liked the duck more than the beef because it was more tender and had more flavour.
Here is a photo of the chef pulling the dough to create the delicious noodles!

Tasty noodle, you were DEFINITELY tasty! Don’t judge a book by its cover or you’ll miss out on some delicious noodles. Give this place a try if you’re ever in New York City’s Chinatown neighbourhood!

Yay!

Thanks for reading,

Carmen

Candle 79, New York City

May 18, 2016

While looking up places to eat in New York, I came across Candle 79. Even though I am not vegan, I wanted to try a vegan place because it’s really nice and relaxing to walk in to a restaurant and not have to stress over whether something contains dairy in it or not. As well, Candle 79 had really great reviews, so how could I pass it up?
So, after an afternoon of exploring Central Park and The Met museum, we explored the Upper East Side and went to Candle 79!

As mentioned above, Candle 79 is a completely vegan restaurant. None of their menus or signage advertise this, but I had found it under the vegan section on Yelp and the server confirmed that everything here is vegan. Don’t get me wrong, I am a huge meat lover, so vegan or vegetarian food takes a lot to impress me. Let’s see how they did!
We were still pretty full from our lunch at Blue Dog, but didn’t want to pass up the opportunity to try this place. Since we already had plans for the rest of the trip and wouldn’t be in this area of NYC again, we decided on just having a small snack to at least try something!

Angel’s nachos, $16: Made with corn chips, ‘mozarella’, chili beans, tofu sour cream, and guacamole. The mozarella is the dairy & soy alternative from Daiya, which you may have seen in grocery stores. For nachos that don’t have real cheese, this was delicious. The tofu sour cream tasted like real sour cream, while there was a very generous portion of guacamole. The corn chips were really crunchy and thick as well.

The one thing I didn’t really like was the chipotle seitan. Seitan is a vegetarian meat alternative, made from wheat. I found it have the texture of tofu puffs, and didn’t really match the taste or texture of meat to me. So, I ate everything else which was delicious!
Housemade ice cream sampler, $9: The nachos were already really filling considering we weren’t hungry to begin with, but I couldn’t pass up the chance to have ICE CREAM. I was already sold when our server told us it was made with rich coconut milk. I’ve been deprived of ice cream for soooo long.

The chef’s selection that day was the strawberry coconut soy, mango, and vanilla chocolate. THEY WERE SO GOOD. Seriously guys, it was soo creamy from the coconut milk that you can’t even tell it’s dairy free. To this day, I am still thinking and wishing that I had Candle 79’s ice cream again.

My favourite was the strawberry, and I found myself savouring every creamy bite. The mango, although it was called a ‘sorbet’, was really creamy and tasted deliciously creamy as well. I found the vanilla chocolate to be too sweet, and that one melted quite fast, while the other two didn’t melt.

Whether you are vegan or not, Candle 79 is a delicious restaurant and worth trying out. I will continue to think about their vegan ice cream over and over again, especially since the weather is getting hotter now.

Thanks for reading!

Carmen

Coast Restaurant

March 6, 2016

Note: I wrote this review a year ago, last March. I came back here in May 2015 and didn’t really have a good experience, so I hesitated to put this review up. The service was really slow and un-attentive, while the food didn’t taste as good as the review I have written here below.

——

Back when I used to work in downtown, I had the pleasure of going to Coast for lunch. It was my second time here, and I suggested this place because I had a wonderful experience the first time I went. From the atmosphere to service to food, everything was exceptionally done (the second time I came which is what the review is based on, the third time was not good).

Originally, my cousin and I had plans to eat at Black & Blue for lunch, and I decided to read up on the menu before we went since I had a limited lunch break. I was a bit shocked at how abysmal the Zomato ratings were for that restaurant – I thought it was a good restaurant!

Since the Glowbal Group restaurants aren’t particularly cheap, we decided to be safe and go back to Coast, since it was good the last time we went. I was able to make a last minute reservation online without any problems.

The circular oyster bar in the middle of the restaurant. I love the interior and ambiance of Coast. Some of the seating is a bit squishy and uncomfortable, especially during peak hours. You could be sitting almost shoulder to shoulder with the next table.
Sorry, I forgot what drink this was but it was one of their non-alcoholic cocktails. I tried to read their menu online, but none of the drinks there seemed to ring a bell so perhaps the menu changed.

I thought it was really refreshing, and wasn’t too sweet but had some strawberry pulp in it. If I was going to be picky, I would have liked it with less ice because I found that 1/2 the drink was ice.
My cousin and I decided to split all of our lunch items. We both weren’t that hungry since we had some light snacks before meeting up, so decided to split some items.

You can’t go to Coast without ordering their seafood.

First up on the left, was the spicy ahi tuna roll. For $12.95, it is a bit overpriced considering a lot of Japanese restaurants can serve this for half the price, but there is no denying that the quality was definitely there. The tuna was extremely fresh and melted in your mouth. It came flavoured with a mouth watering sesame yuzu sauce, and a hint of spice. There were small crunchy flakes on top which topped the cherry off in an amazing roll.
On the right, were the fish and chip cones. It came with cod tempura, greens, fresh tobiko, and rice wrapped in some sort of soy paper (???). Again, everything tasted delightfully fresh and the tempura was perfectly crunchy. I loved biting into the crunchy tobiko as well, which popped with flavour! The rice bed did a good job in filling me up as well.
Our last dish was the smoked salmon flatbread. Give me almost anything with smoked salmon and arugula, and I will eat it. Smoked salmon and arugula is probably one of my favourite combinations of food.

The flatbread was thicker than I expected, I was expecting some sort of thin crust pizza-variation for some reason.

I came back here last May (see note above), and ordered this as well. Unfortunately, it was not as good as the flatbread was drenched in so much mayo that it we couldn’t taste anything else. This place isn’t as consistent as it used to be, so I’m unsure if I would come back especially since it’s not cheap dining.

Would have been a yay! but because of the second experience, it is a meh…

Thanks for reading!

Carmen

The Fish Counter

September 29, 2015

Before summer ended, I spent the afternoon with Gin exploring Main Street. Both of us had been wanting to try The Fish Counter for a long time, and couldn’t find a better time to check it off both of our lists.
The Fish Shop serves up sustainable seafood, and all products are Ocean Wise. The place reminded me of a cool, local seafood shop.

Since it was a nice and sunny day, the windows were all open and so was the patio. The sun was coming in, the air was fresh and warm – what more could you ask for?

It took us quite a while to decide on what to order as everything looked so delicious! We ended up splitting three items for lunch.

The first thing we ordered was the special that day, the Greek fish taco. This caught my eye because I am a HUGE fan of Greek food and I can’t pass down anything with tzatiki sauce. Seriously, I don’t normally tend to finish all my dipping sauces with my food but when it’s tzatiki sauce… I’ll gobble it up so fast before you know it was there!

Everything tasted really fresh but unfortunately, we both found this taco to be lacking in taste and very plain.

We were torn between the chowder and BC bouillabaisse, and ended up deciding on the latter. This soup was seriously amazing and was a seafood lover’s dream. There was an extremely generous amount of seafood – with every scoop we had, there was an abundance of fish, clams, shrimp, etc that came along with it.

We really enjoyed the soup and would order it again in a heart beat! I must warn you though, if you’re not a seafood lover, you might find this soup a bit too ‘fishy’ but we thought it was absolutely perfect.
The last thing we ordered was the crab and shrimp baguette, or pretty much a shrimp/crabcake baguette Again, all the ingredients were really fresh and the flavours went well together. The baguette was nice and soft too, while the side salad came with fresh and crunchy vegetables.

I would recommend squeezing a bit of lemon juice on top to further accentuate the flavours!

Since this place is mostly self serve, you clean up after yourself once you’re done eating.

Overall, we really enjoyed our first experience at The Fish Shop and I would recommend this place if you’re a seafood lover. All the ingredients they use are really fresh and the quality of the food is definitely there. Since the seating area is a bit limited, this would be a good place to order take out as well. The staff are also extremely nice and welcoming.

On the other side of the restaurant is their actual fish shop! We didn’t buy any seafood to bring home to cook that day, but the option is there for those who want to.

Thanks for reading!

-Carmen